Hale Street Haven - Community Garden Centre

With an existing built environment, many buildings over the course of time find themselves redundant and are often left neglected, leading to mass amounts of derelict construction dotted across the globe.

This project explores the notion of repurposing and repairing through the housing of an existing building and how feasible it is for a building in any condition to be injected with a new lease of life and made to be architecturally stimulating. Through the repair of units 4–10 Hale Street, located in Coventry, the aim is to provide a fabric to bring a community together, educating them in the development of a future in which urban areas are reclaimed by vegetation and connect to centres as a network similar to the roots of a tree.

The scheme features spaces holding controlled environments as a means to educate people through physical experiences, facilitating growth and educating the community on how to be self-sufficient. A key technical challenge was the insulation of an existing fabric; to compensate for this, I looked at companies that provide services, such as Ty Mawr, based in Wales. This goes hand in hand with my cork-clad timber structure addition to the first floor of the building housing the open-plan social and educational space, used during the day by the public; during the evenings when public use is closed, it would be used by a private-led community group. The importance of future projects needing to be formed from existing fabric is an eye-opener.

Through the process of this project, it has become clear that one can design and have their own input when working with an existing fabric, but one must stay conscious of the existing context, whether historical or cultural.